Russia to allow commercial sturgeon fishing in Amur River soon
MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Russia's state fisheries agency Rosrybolovstvo is expected to give its go-ahead to commercial sturgeon fishing in the Amur River soon, Rosrybolovstvo spokesman Alexander Savelyev told Interfax.
"The population of sturgeon is large enough in the Amur River to allow commercial fishing, according to experts. The government of the Khabarovsk territory has filed a relevant application," he said.
But before the final go-ahead is given, the prospect must be negotiated with other agencies, he also said.
Another reason for restarting the commercial sturgeon fishing is that China has been catching sturgeon in the Amur all along, although the young stock is let out into the river in Russia.
Sturgeon fishing is only allowed in the Lena River with the limit on catches at 49 tonnes.
On sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea and black caviar exports, Savelyev said that no overall quota was agreed upon last year at an annual session of the Caspian states [Russia Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran]. "A technical moratorium on sturgeon fishing was introduced," he said. As a result, CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] did not distribute either sturgeon fishing quotas, or quotas for exporting black caviar.
Concurrently, the Caspian states are weighing a plan to impose a five-year moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea.
A fresh step was made towards this objective in Astana in mid February, where delegations of the five states discussed mechanisms of introducing the moratorium. Kazakh experts provided a biological substantiation of the ban and mechanisms of introducing it.
Russia unilaterally imposed a moratorium on the commercial fishing of beluga sturgeon in 2000 and of common and starred sturgeon in 2005.
But experts argue it was not effective, since other countries continued fishing and the population of these species has been shrinking.
The Caspian Sea accounts for 90% of the stock of sturgeon.